For several years, I worked in an interior office with nothing but a buzzing fluorescent light to illuminate my space. After buckling down on a project for hours, I was always surprised when I emerged, looked out someone else’s window and saw it was snowing. Or storming.
Little did I know when I started at Window & Door that the Pittsburgh area is jam-packed with manufacturers in the fenestration industry. In April, I was welcomed to two local-to-me plants. I visited Thermal Windows & Doors in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, which introduced vinyl windows to the U.S. in the 1960s, Dave Steinberg, director of sales and marketing, told me.
Google My Business is a free online tool that is super easy to use and can help increase any business’s online marketing performance. Still, many companies have yet to claim their business profile on Google.
Two weeks ago, I attended Professional Remodeler magazine’s Extreme Lead Generation conference. The Window & Door Dealers Alliance was proud to be a partner of this industry event focused on lead generation tools and tactics for home builders and professional remodelers.
Regular readers know I remain a strong proponent of doing everything possible to make your window and door website rank as highly as possible in organic (unpaid) local search results. While pay-per-click advertising and other internet marketing techniques have gained traction in recent years, local businesses still get the bulk of online lead generation, conversions and revenue from ranking highly in organic searches.
Many companies rely on the expertise of internet marketing agencies for ad development, placement and intellectual property right protection. But, as recent experience with Facebook and “tailored” content has illustrated, internet advertising can also present a Wild West for the digital frontier. Window and door companies using digital ad agencies must exercise caution.
I’ve written it many times before, but it bears repeating: you can’t take advantage of everything online marketing can do for you if you don’t have great content on your website. Content is foundational to attracting website traffic, converting visitors into leads as well as achieving top-quality SEO that ranks your site above local competition.
I vividly remember the moment when it dawned on me that every single person—from the most successful business owners and CEOs to the janitor sweeping the floors, the attendant at the gas station and everyone in between—is making things up as they go along. For years, I assumed that, with rank and title, came “the manual.”
LinkedIn, the online professional networking tool, was a topic of two workshops I gave at the American Architectural Manufacturers Association 2017 National Fall Conference. Even if you’re not currently job-hunting, you should care about the state of your current LinkedIn profile. It’s always good to see what’s happening in your industry, how companies and roles are changing and who in your network might just be perfect for an opportunity on your radar.
Despite the seemingly sophisticated path of our evolution as a modern civilization, there still exist men and women in the workplace who have either ignored, forgotten or altogether failed to learn how to treat one another.